Nearly a third of the the world’s High Income population are now in the Perennials 55+ generation. Yet companies mostly ignore their needs – assuming that all they want are walking sticks and sanitary pads. Instead, they continue to focus on the relatively declining number of younger people. No wonder many companies are going bankrupt, and […]
Chemicals and the Economy
China’s renminbi and the global ring of fire
China’s property bubble puts it at the epicentre of the ring of fire © Reuters China’s devaluation could be the trigger for an international debt crisis, as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog August has often seen the start of major debt crises. The Latin American […]
London house prices edge closer to a tumble
After the excitement of Wimbledon tennis and a cricket World Cup final, Londoners were back to their favourite conversation topic last week – house prices. But now the news has become bittersweet as the price decline starts to accelerate. As the London Evening Standard headline confirms: “The London property slump has dramatically accelerated with prices […]
G7 births hit new record low, below Depression level in 1933
If a country doesn’t have any babies, then in time it won’t have an economy. But that’s not how the central banks see it. For the past 20 years, through subprime and now their stimulus policies, they have believed they could effectively “print babies”. Even today, they are still lining up to take global interest […]
Smartphone market decline begins to impact global stock markets
The bad news continues for the world’s smartphone manufacturers and their suppliers. And President Trump’s decision to add a 25% tariff on smartphone component imports from China from June 25 is unlikely to help. Morgan Stanley estimate it will add $160 to the current US iPhone XS price of $999, whilst a state-backed Chinese consumer boycott […]
Ageing Perennials set to negate central bank stimulus as recession approaches
The world’s best leading indicator for the global economy is still firmly signalling recession. That’s the key conclusion from the chart above, showing latest data on global chemical industry Capacity Utilisation (CU%) from the American Chemistry Council. The logic behind the indicator is compelling: Chemicals are one of the world’s largest industries, and also one […]
Déjà vu all over again for oil markets as recession risks rise
Back in 2015, veteran Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi was very clear about Saudi’s need to adopt a market share-based pricing policy: “Saudi Arabia cut output in 1980s to support prices. I was responsible for production at Aramco at that time, and I saw how prices fell, so we lost on output and on prices […]
The BoE’s pre-emptive strike is not without risk
The Financial Times has kindly printed my letter below, arguing that it seems the default answer to almost any economic question has now become “more stimulus” from the central bank. After 15 years of subprime lending and then quantitative easing, last week’s warning from the Bank of England suggests there are fewer and fewer economic […]
Fed’s magic money tree hopes to overcome smartphone sales downturn and global recession risk
Last November, I wrote one of my “most-read posts”, titled Global smartphone recession confirms consumer downturn. The only strange thing was that most people read it several weeks later on 3 January, after Apple announced its China sales had fallen due to the economic downturn. Why did Apple and financial markets only then discover that smartphone sales […]
CEOs need new business models amid downturn
Many indicators are now pointing towards a global downturn in the economy, along with paradigm shifts in demand patterns. CEOs need to urgently build resilient business models to survive and prosper in this New Normal world, as I discuss in my 2019 Outlook and video interview with ICIS. Global recession is the obvious risk as we start […]
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